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out to meet with their outer airlock. On the far side of the tube floated
something like a small airship.
The air was briefly cold as they walked through, turning gradually warmer as
they approached the airship. The atmos- phere felt thick. Underneath their
feet, the tunnel of air seemed as pliantly firm as wood. He carried his own
modest lug- gage; Eweirl toted two immense kit bags as though they were
purses, and Visquile was followed by a civilian drone carrying his bags.
The airship was about forty metres long; a single giant ellipsoid in dark
purple, its smooth-
looking envelope of skin lined with long yellow strakes of frill which rippled
slowly in the warm air like the mantle of a fish. The tube led the three
Chelgrians to a small gondola slung underneath the vessel.
The gondola looked like something grown rather than con- structed, like the
hollowed-out husk of an immense fruit; it appeared to have no windows until
they climbed aboard, making the ship tip gently, but gauzy panels let in light
and made the smooth interior glow with a pastel-green light.
It held them comfortably. The tube of air dissipated behind them as the gon-
dola s door irised shut.
Eweirl popped his earplugs in and put on his visor, sitting back, seemingly
oblivious. Visquile sat with his silvery stave planted between his feet, the
round top under his chin, gazing ahead through one of the gauzy windows.
Quilan had only the vaguest idea where he was. He had seen the gigantic,
slowly revolving elongated 8-shaped object ahead of them for several hours
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before they d rendezvoused. The privateer ship had closed very slowly,
seemingly on emergency thrust alone, and the thing - the world, as he was now
starting to think of it, having come to a rough estimate of its size - had
just kept getting bigger and bigger and filling more and more of the view
ahead, yet without betraying any detail.
Finally one of the body s lobes had blotted out the view of the other, and it
was~as though they were approaching an immense planet of glowing blue-green
water.
What looked like five small suns were visible revolving with the vast shape,
though they seemed too small to be stars. Their positioning implied there
would be another two, hidden behind the world. As they got very close,
matching rotational speed with the world and coming near enough to see the
forming indentation they were heading for, with the tiny purple dot
immediately behind it, Quilan saw what looked like la ers of clouds, just
hinted at, inside. y
What is this place? Quilan said, not trying to keep the wonder and awe out
of his voice.
They call them airspheres, Visquile said. He looked warily pleased, and not
especially impressed. This is a rotating twin- lobe example. Its name is the
Oskendari airsphere.
The airship dipped, diving still deeper into the thick air. They passed
through one level of thin clouds like islands floating on an invisible sea.
The airship wobbled as it went through the layer. Quilan craned his neck to
see the clouds, lit from underneath by a sun far beneath them. He experienced
a sudden sense of disorientation
Below, something appearing out of the haze caught his eye; a vast shape just
one shade darker than the blueness all around. As the airship approached he
saw the immense shadow the shape cast,
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stretching upwards into the haze. Again, something like vertigo struck him.
He d been given a visor too. He put it on and magnified the view. The blue
shape disappeared in a shimmer of heat; he took the visor off and used his
naked eyes.
A dirigible behemothaur, Visquile said. Eweirl, suddenly back with them,
took off his visor and shifted over to Quilan s side of the gondola to look,
imbalancing the airship for a moment. The shape below looked a little like a
flattened and more complicated version of the craft they were in. Smaller
shapes, some like other airships, some winged, flew lazily about it.
Quilan watched the smaller features of the creature emerge as they dropped
down towards it. The behemothaur s envelope skin was blue and purple, and it
too possessed long lines of pale yellow-
green frills which rippled along its length, seemingly propelling it. Giant
fins protruded vertically and laterally, topped with long bulbous protrusions,
like the wing-tip fuel tanks of ancient aircraft. Across its summit line and
along its sides, great scalloped dark-red ridges ran, like three enormous,
encasing spines. Other protrusions, bulbs and hummocks covered its top and
sides, producing a generally symmetrical effect that only broke down at a more
detailed level.
As they drew still closer, Quilan had to press himself against the frame of
the little airship s gondola window to see both ends of the giant below them.
The creature must be five kilometres long, perhaps more.
This is one of their domains, the Estodien went on. They have seven or
eight others distributed round the outskirts of the galaxy. No one is entirely
sure quite how many there are. The behemothaurs are as big as mountains and as
old as the hills. They are sentient, allegedly, the remnant of a species or
civilisation which Sublimed more than a billion years ago. Though again, only
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by repute. This one is called the Sansemin. It is in the power of those who
are our allies in this matter.
Quilan looked inquiringly at the older male. Visquile, still hunched over
holding his glittering stave, made a shrugging motion.
You ll meet them, or their representatives, Major, but you won t know who
they are.
Quilan nodded, and went back to looking out the window. He considered asking
why they had come to this place, but thought the better of it.
How long will we be here, Estodien? he asked instead.
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